"Laughable eyewitness testimony"

[faithlilly]

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5182
I would like to focus on eyewitness testimony a little more before moving on to other matters.  In the Dean Gillispie wrongful conviction, Mr. Gillispie's photograph stood out from the others.  "The detective created a photo lineup in which Gillispie’s photo “was closer and larger than the other photos in the spread and, unlike the other photos, had a matte finish,” Judge Merz wrote."  Also, "The defense challenged the lineup as being unfairly suggestive because the photo of Gillispie had a yellow background while the other photos had blue backgrounds."  For more on the problems of memory with respect to eyewitness identifications, Chapter 5 in Mark Godsey's book Blind Injustice is a good read.  Mr. Godsey is a former prosecutor.  In the present case there was one badly flawed photo lineup, and one identification that had no lineup at all.  Astonishing.

Juries are indeed present for the whole trial, yet there are still wrongful convictions; therefore, being present is not sufficient to prevent a miscarriage of justice.  Jim and Nancy Petro's book "False Justice" gives some reasons.  One is that not all jurors understand finality in the criminal justice system, believing that if they make a mistake, that the appeals system will correct it.  Lindy Chamberlain lost all of her appeals, and only dumb luck led to her freedom.  Todd Willingham lost all of his appeals an was executed, yet several top arson investigators have found no evidence of arson.  Anyone pinning his or her hopes on being exonerated by the appeals system is naive.

BTW portions of the denial of the 2008 appeal can be found at Murderpedia.org, and the passages that I have read are predictable in their defense of the police and prosecution.  I do not recall seeing the SCCRC's decision, and until I do, I will withhold judgment on it.  But while looking for more information on it, I did find this piece of information in another thread here:  "The results indicated that although it was likely the DNA was attributable to semen, it was not possible to say conclusively that other body fluids were not also included."  Hmmm...

Further if a family member had been the perpetrator of this crime then it would not be odd to find their DNA on the victim. Indeed it would be odd not to. There was no forensic examination of Jodi’s family’s home or any site connected to the family so who knows what that would have thrown up.

Jodi’s brother was identified by a witness as a man seen following her yet it appears he was never questioned about this let alone being asked to attend an identification parade, after all there were two witnesses who saw Jodi being followed. He was also never put on the witness stand by the defence. This I find odd. His only alibi was his mother and while his mother was indeed a victim of this horrendous crime it does not rule out the fact that she may have lied to save her son.

[Chris_Halkides]

Mark Godsey (p. 113 of Blind Injustice) wrote, “In 1979 in Georgia, a woman was raped by an intruder in her home. She told police that her attacker had a round face and a stocky build.¹ Several weeks after the rape, the police had her look at suspects in a live lineup (see fig. 3).
“All five suspects in the lineup are quite thin with narrow faces, except the man on the far right. The man on the right seems to be the only one who fit the physical characteristics of the rapist described by the victim. Nevertheless, the victim selected the man in the middle, John Jerome White. After she identified him again at trial, White was convicted and spent more than twenty-two years in prison before DNA testing exonerated him.² The testing further proved , however, that the man on the far right, James Parham, was the actual rapist.
“Why did the victim erroneously choose White when the real rapist was right in front of her? Because a few days before the live lineup, the police had her look at a photo spread, which included a photo of White but not of Parham…As I will explain, memory experts now understand that when a rape victim incorrectly selects the photo of an innocent person, the face in that photo often transplants the face of the real perpetrator, and the victim may no longer even recognize the actual rapist.”

Now consider the evidence of Mrs. Andrina Bryson:

Gordon McIlwraith wrote, "The trial also heard evidence yesterday from a woman who said she noticed a man and a girl at the head of the path on the day Jodi was killed. Andrina Bryson said she later saw a picture of Luke Mitchell in the Daily Record and she was taken aback because he looked like the person she had seen. Mrs Bryson, 26, said she was driving home shortly before 5pm when she spotted the girl and the young man at the Easthouses entrance to the path. She reported what she had seen to the police and they came to her house on August 14 with a sheet of photos of 12 young men. She picked out one and told the court: 'In relation to the person I had seen, he looked like that person.' The next day she saw a photo of Mitchell in the Record. Mrs Bryson said: 'I just couldn't believe it. It looked like the same person I had seen...Mrs Bryson admitted that when quizzed by the police about the sighting, she had estimated the girl was 14 or 15 but the man was in his early 20s.'" (found at TheFreeLibrary and upthread)

Both instances strike me as transplanted memories.

[faithlilly]

Mark Godsey (p. 113 of Blind Injustice) wrote, “In 1979 in Georgia, a woman was raped by an intruder in her home. She told police that her attacker had a round face and a stocky build.¹ Several weeks after the rape, the police had her look at suspects in a live lineup (see fig. 3).
“All five suspects in the lineup are quite thin with narrow faces, except the man on the far right. The man on the right seems to be the only one who fit the physical characteristics of the rapist described by the victim. Nevertheless, the victim selected the man in the middle, John Jerome White. After she identified him again at trial, White was convicted and spent more than twenty-two years in prison before DNA testing exonerated him.² The testing further proved , however, that the man on the far right, James Parham, was the actual rapist.
“Why did the victim erroneously choose White when the real rapist was right in front of her? Because a few days before the live lineup, the police had her look at a photo spread, which included a photo of White but not of Parham…As I will explain, memory experts now understand that when a rape victim incorrectly selects the photo of an innocent person, the face in that photo often transplants the face of the real perpetrator, and the victim may no longer even recognize the actual rapist.”

Now consider the evidence of Mrs. Andrina Bryson:

Gordon McIlwraith wrote, "The trial also heard evidence yesterday from a woman who said she noticed a man and a girl at the head of the path on the day Jodi was killed. Andrina Bryson said she later saw a picture of Luke Mitchell in the Daily Record and she was taken aback because he looked like the person she had seen. Mrs Bryson, 26, said she was driving home shortly before 5pm when she spotted the girl and the young man at the Easthouses entrance to the path. She reported what she had seen to the police and they came to her house on August 14 with a sheet of photos of 12 young men. She picked out one and told the court: 'In relation to the person I had seen, he looked like that person.' The next day she saw a photo of Mitchell in the Record. Mrs Bryson said: 'I just couldn't believe it. It looked like the same person I had seen...Mrs Bryson admitted that when quizzed by the police about the sighting, she had estimated the girl was 14 or 15 but the man was in his early 20s.'" (found at TheFreeLibrary and upthread)

Both instances strike me as transplanted memories.

Absolutely and further if Bryson in her first statements claimed the sighting was an hour later than it actually was how can she ever be described as a credible witness.

[Chris_Halkides]

I would like to return to Rosemary Walsh and the photograph of Luke Mitchell. Sandra Lean wrote (p. 130), "After Luke's picture appeared in the media for the first time on August 15th, Rosemary Walsh began telling colleagues that Luke was the persons she and her sister-in-law saw on the evening of June 30th...On August 21st, police approached Mrs Walsh again to confirm her "recognition" of Luke, taking with them the newspaper picture."

The BBC reported, "Recalling the newspaper when speaking to police last September, Ms Walsh told them: 'As soon as I saw the photo, he jumped out at me as the male I saw on the path at the gate that night.' She told the court that she had seen the newspaper story at her work. She said the delay in speaking to police was because she wanted to check with her sister-in-law [Ms. Fleming] first."

The report from the BBC is a little ambiguous in one respect, namely that "as soon as I saw the photo" could refer to when she saw the photo in the paper (on or after 15 August) or when the police showed it to her (I favor the former interpretation). Some commenters say that Ms. Walsh exclaimed words to the effect, "Oh my God, it's him" when she saw the photograph, but I cannot find a citation for this.

If Ms. Walsh saw Luke Mitchell's photo before 21 August, then the identification process was already compromised. That does not excuse the police, however, for not showing her a photo or live lineup. Even if Ms. Walsh said those words to the police on 21 August, it may only reflect her transplanting the photographic image onto the events of the late afternoon of 30 June. The more I look into the eyewitness evidence in this case, the more I think that it was a Potemkin village.

[Chris_Halkides]

Chapter 3 of Brandon L. Garrett's book Convicting the Innocent covers eyewitness identification errors. He wrote on page 57, "Additional eyewitness misidentifications, other than from showups, occurred after witnesses were exposed to single images of the exoneree. Some witnesses also saw wanted posters or media coverage displaying a composite drawing of the subject. In Michael Blair's case, for example all three eyewitnesses had already seen photos of him in the local newspaper or on television before picking his photo from a lineup.⁴⁰"

This passage is relevant to the present case because from the sources I have consulted, both Rosemary Walsh and Andrina Bryson saw Luke Mitchell's photograph in the newspaper (see comments upthread).

[Chris_Halkides]

In Convicting the Innocent, a retrospective analysis of wrongful convictions, Brandon L. Garrett wrote, “Although showups may be highly suggestive, a lineup may also be suggestive if it is not set up fairly.  At least 34% of the trials obtained with eyewitness testimony (55 of 161 trials) were biased, or stacked to make the suspect stand out.  If some of the fillers in the lineup do not look anything like the description of the culprit, or the suspect, then the lineup is not a sound test of the eyewitnesses’ memory.⁴¹

This passage is relevant to the photo lineup that was shown to Andrina Bryson.  Mr. Mitchell's photo stood out, and he was the only one with long hair.  The fact that it was a photo lineup is also problematic.  "If a proper ID parade had been held instead - as recommended in official guidelines - a solicitor could have objected to the "stand-ins", said the lawyer [Donald Findlay]. https://www.heraldscotland.com/default_content/12456504.police-cast-fairness-aside-pin-murder-mitchell/

Some of the specifics of this identification are open to question.  "She never identified the girl as Jodi but described a male with lots of messy hair making a strange gesture towards the girl." Her initial description was of someone older than Luke Mitchell, and his hair pretty much hangs down.  Ms. Bryson was going around a turn, and to see the two people, she would have had to look left while turning right if northbound or right while turning left if southbound.  How she would have had time to observe strange gestures is not clear.

[Chris_Halkides]

No disprespect, but if you knew the local area you might see things differently. Of course there were many witness inconsistencies on botrh sides, but neither of us were at the trial to witness the full presented evidence where the jury gave a majority guilty verdict. I have not met anyone that was at court that doubted the verdict and have spoken to associates of SM who verify this. You/we can grasp at straws that may shed a tiny speck of doubt on the verdict, but no appeal has been anywhere near gaining ground in altering the original decision. If SL was to publish even parts of the 200 page statement of reasons from the SCCRC  then the whole sorry affair would soon collapse.

No credible Scottish lawyer will touch this case which is why it falls to Lean & Forbes to whip up those who are easily lead.

PS: If I was guilty of any crime I would have Findlay KC on my side - one of the sharpest legal minds around - but LM prefers Forbes and a small town local criminal defence lawyer.

KenMore,

I doubt that the average local resident has spent time pondering the right and wrong ways to elicit an eyewitness identification: why should they?  It is a subject that abuts one of my professional interests, and reading up on it has been both interesting and informative.  The present case has many points of similarity with other problematic eyewitness identifications, as I have touched upon in my recent comments.

The case took over forty days, yet the jury took just five hours to reach a verdict.  It is difficult for me to see how they had time to deliberate about each witness and every forensic question.  I also think that the defense should have called an expert in eyewitness testimony to walk the jury through the...shortcuts...that the police employed.  The comments of Tim Valentine in the BBC Frontline documentary were enlightening.

[Chris_Halkides]

The BBC Frontline documentary apparently had access to the original police statements from Janine Jones and her boyfriend Steven Kelly, who along with Alice Walker and Luke Mitchell, formed the search party on the night of 30 June 2023. Starting at about 21 minutes into this documentary, the statements are compared and contrasted to the testimonies. These discrepancies are consistent with my recollection the discussion of this topic within Dr. Lean's book, and their existence undermines a major plank of the prosecution's case. Professor Tim Valentine (https://www.gold.ac.uk/psychology/staff/valentine/) is quoted at several points in the documentary including this one. One wishes that an expert in eyewitness identifications had given evidence at the trial, but I am unaware of any such testimony.

One point that came up in the Knox/Sollecito case was that the prosecution's theory required that the two accused be criminal masterminds at some points and complete idiots at others. That is true in the present case as well. A hypothetically guilty Luke Mitchell would be very foolish to go up to the body unprompted. Instead (and assuming that he wished to participate in finding the body for some reason), he should have insisted on obtaining a piece of Jodi's clothing to present to Mia, his Alsatian dog who was being trained to track.

[Nicholas]

The BBC Frontline documentary apparently had access to the original police statements from Janine Jones and her boyfriend Steven Kelly, who along with Alice Walker and Luke Mitchell, formed the search party on the night of 30 June 2023. Starting at about 21 minutes into this documentary, the statements are compared and contrasted to the testimonies. These discrepancies are consistent with my recollection the discussion of this topic within Dr. Lean's book, and their existence undermines a major plank of the prosecution's case. Professor Tim Valentine (https://www.gold.ac.uk/psychology/staff/valentine/) is quoted at several points in the documentary including this one. One wishes that an expert in eyewitness identifications had given evidence at the trial, but I am unaware of any such testimony.

One point that came up in the Knox/Sollecito case was that the prosecution's theory required that the two accused be criminal masterminds at some points and complete idiots at others. That is true in the present case as well. A hypothetically guilty Luke Mitchell would be very foolish to go up to the body unprompted. Instead (and assuming that he wished to participate in finding the body for some reason), he should have insisted on obtaining a piece of Jodi's clothing to present to Mia, his Alsatian dog who was being trained to track.

Is this the same as what you posted here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14093916

Roberta Glass has a playlist on Innocence fraudsters Knox & Sollecito
👇
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZCroaJ4oThAQ908NkEzftgURqs7CEqBo

[Nicholas]

One point that came up in the Knox/Sollecito case was that the prosecution's theory required that the two accused be criminal masterminds at some points and complete idiots at others. That is true in the present case as well. A hypothetically guilty Luke Mitchell would be very foolish to go up to the body unprompted.

That’s what he did do

One month shy of his 15th birthday and he wasn’t at all phased and stayed over that side of the wall, even when he eventually dialled 999

Amanda Knox Explains it All to You
👇
https://www.youtube.com/live/OtTnNR_eHpI?feature=share

[Chris_Halkides]

Nicholas,

Do you believe that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent or guilty?  I just listened to a few minutes of one of the podcasts by Roberta Glass, and it had the usual nonsensical arguments.  After I heard her make an obvious forensic chemistry error, I gave up.
EDT
These are more general questions:  Do you know of any wrongfully convicted individuals?  Do you know of any false confessions?

[Chris_Halkides]

Roberta Glass has a playlist on Innocence fraudsters Knox & Sollecito
👇
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZCroaJ4oThAQ908NkEzftgURqs7CEqBo

Roberta Glass is another guilt grifter.  She makes Pat Brown look fair and balanced by comparison.

[Nicholas]

I just listened to a few minutes of one of the podcasts by Roberta Glass

Amanda Knox Changes Her Story Again!
👇
https://www.youtube.com/live/HsPxozrB6os?feature=share

[Chris_Halkides]

Roberta Glass claimed that the rock that broke Filomena's window was thrown from the inside.

"To establish whether the window was broken from inside or out, the investigation lawyers recruited forensic glass specialist Greg Waite.  Returning to the scale set, Mr Waite set about throwing a similar rock through a window from the outside-in and then repeated it from the inside-out.  After consulting the limited crime scene photographs, he concluded that it was 'more likely' that the rock had come from the outside."

This is far from the only forensic mistake Roberta Glass made.  Yet she speaks in such derogatory tones about other people who do not share her views.  I hope that she does not take on the Luke Mitchell case; the results would inevitably be a pathetic mess of a podcast.

[Nicholas]

Roberta Glass claimed that the rock that broke Filomena's window was thrown from the inside.

"To establish whether the window was broken from inside or out, the investigation lawyers recruited forensic glass specialist Greg Waite.  Returning to the scale set, Mr Waite set about throwing a similar rock through a window from the outside-in and then repeated it from the inside-out.  After consulting the limited crime scene photographs, he concluded that it was 'more likely' that the rock had come from the outside."

Do you mean like Peter Bull in actually, factually guilty killer Simon Hall case?